34 - Most Doctors Don't Know The Radiation Level Of CAT Scans

Using extended doses of encircling X-rays, CAT scans give a detailed look inside your body,
revealing not only bones but soft tissue and blood vessels, as well. According to the health site
lmaginis.com, over 70,000 places around the world offer CAT scans to detect and diagnose
tumors, heart disease, osteoporosis, blood clots, spinal fractures, nerve damage, and lots of other problems. Because it can uncover so much, its use has become widespread and continues to rise. In fact, healthy people are getting scans just to see if anything might be wrong, kind of like a routine check-up.

The downside, and it's a doozy, is that a CAT scan jolts you with 100 to 250 times the dose of
radiation that you get from a chest X-ray. What's even more alarming is that most doctors
apparently don't know this.

An emergency physician from the Yale School of Medicine surveyed 45 of his colleagues about
the pros and cons of CAT scans. A mere nine of them said that they tell patients about the
radiation. This might be just as well, in a weird way, since most of them had absolutely no clue
about how much radiation CAT scans give off. When asked to compare the blast from a chest Xray to the blast from a CAT scan, only 22 percent of the docs got it right. As for the other threequarters, The Medical Post relates:

Three of the doctors said the dose was either less than or equal to a chest X-ray.
Twenty (44%) of the doctors said the dose was greater than a chest X-ray, but less than 10
times the dose. Just over one-fifth of the doctors (22%) said the radiation dose from a CT
was more than 10 times that of an X-ray but less than 100 times the dose.

Only ten of them knew that a single CAT scan equals 100 to 250 chest X-rays, while two thought that the scans were even worse than that.

Feel free to give your doc a pop quiz during your next office visit.

35 - Medication Errors Kill Thousand Each Year

Next time you get a prescription filled, look at the label very carefully. Getting the wrong drug or
the wrong dosage kills hundreds or thousands of people each year, with many times that number getting injured.

Renegade health reporter Nicholas Regush — a self-imposed exile from ABC News — provides
ii long list of specific problems:

Poor handwriting. Verbal orders. Ambiguous orders. Prescribing errors. Failure to write
orders. Unapproved uses. When the order is not modified or cancelled. Look-alike and
sound-alike drug names. Dangerous abbreviations. Faulty drug distribution systems in
hospital. Failure to read the label or poor labeling. Lack of knowledge about drugs. Lack of
knowledge concerning proper dose. Lack of knowledge concerning route of administration.
Ad nauseam.

After pouring over death certificates, sociology professor David Philips — an expert in mortality
statistics — determined that drug errors kill 7,000 people each year in the US. His study was
published in The Lancet, probably the most prestigious medical journal in the world. The
Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academies of Science, also estimated 7,000.
Interestingly, the Food and Drug Administration published the lowball figure of 365 annually
(one per day). But even the FDA admits that such bungling injures 1.3 million people each year.

New York Newsday cited several specific cases, such as: "In 1995, a Texas doctor wrote an
illegible prescription causing the patient to receive not only the wrong medication, but at eight
times the drug's usually recommended strength. The patient, Ramon Vasquez, died. In 1999, a
court ordered the doctor and pharmacy to pay the patient's family a total of $450,000, the largest amount ever awarded in an illegible prescription case."

Besides doctors' indecipherable chicken scratch, similar-sounding drug names are another big
culprit. Pharmaceutical companies have even started warning medical professionals to be careful with the cookie-cutter names of their products. In a typical example, Celebrex, Cerebyx, Celexa, and Zyprexa sometimes get confused. (Respectively, they're used to treat arthritis, seizures, depression, and psychosis.) According to WebMD: "Bruce Lambert, an assistant professor of pharmacy administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says there are 100,000 potential pairings of drug names that could be confused."

36 - Prescription Drugs Kill Over 100,000 Annually

Even higher than the number of people who die from medication errors is the number of people who die from medication, period. Even when a prescription drug is dispensed properly, there's no guarantee it won't end up killing you.

A remarkable study in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that
prescription drugs kill around 106,000 people in the US every year, which ranks prescription
drugs as the fourth leading cause of death. Furthermore, each years sees 2,216,000 serious
adverse drug reactions (defined as "those that required hospitalization, were permanently
disabling, or resulted in death").

The authors of this 1998 study performed a meta-analysis on 39 previous studies covering 32 years. They factored out such things as medication errors, abuse of prescription drugs, and
adverse reactions not considered serious. Plus, the study involved only people who had either been hospitalized due to drug reactions or who experienced reactions while in the
hospital. People who died immediately (and, thus, never went to the hospital) and those whose deaths weren't realized to be due to prescription drugs were not included, so the true figure
is probably higher.

Four years later, another study in the JAMA warned:

Patient exposure to new drugs with unknown toxic effects may be extensive. Nearly 20
million patients in the United States took at least 1 of the 5 drugs withdrawn from the
market between September 1997 and September 1998. Three of these 5 drugs were new,
having been on the market for less than 2 years. Seven drugs approved since 1993 and
subsequently withdrawn from the market have been reported as possibly contributing to
1002 deaths.

Examining warnings added to drug labels through the years, the study's authors found that of the new chemical entities approved from 1975 to 1999, 10 percent "acquired a new black box
warning or were withdrawn from the market" by 2000. Using some kind of high-falutin'
statistical process, they estimate that the "probability of a new drug acquiring black box warnings or being withdrawn from the market over 25 years was 20%."

A statement released by one of the study's coauthors — Sidney Wolfe, MD, Director of Public
Citizen's Health Studies Group — warned:

In 1997, 39 new drugs were approved by the FDA. As of now [May 2002], five of them
(Rezulin, Posicor, Duract, Raxar and Baycol) have been taken off the market and an
additional two (Trovan, an antibiotic and Orgaran, an anticoagulant) have had new box
warnings. Thus, seven drugs approved that year (18% of the 39 drugs approved) have
already been withdrawn or had a black box warning in just four years after approval.
Based on our study, 20% of drugs will be withdrawn or have a black box warning within
25 years of coming on the market. The drugs approved in 1997 have already almost
"achieved" this in only four years — with 21 years to go.

How does this happen? Before the FDA approves a new drug, it must undergo clinical trials.
These trials aren't performed by the FDA, though — they're done by the drug companies
themselves. These trials often use relatively few patients, and they usually select patients most
likely to react well to the drug. On top of that, the trials are often for a short period of time
(weeks), even though real-world users may be on a drug for months or years at a time. Dr. Wolfe points out that even when adverse effects show up during clinical trials, the drugs are sometimes released anyway, and they end up being taken off the market because of those same adverse effects.

Postmarketing reporting of adverse effects isn't much better. The FDA runs a program to collect
reports of problems with drugs, but compliance is voluntary. The generally accepted estimate in
the medical community is that a scant 10 percent of individual instances of adverse effects are
reported to the FDA, which would mean that the problem is ten times worse than we currently
believe.

Drugs aren't released when they've been proven safe; they're released when enough FDA
bureaucrats — many of whom have worked for the pharmaceutical companies or will work for
them in the future — can be convinced that it's kinda safe. Basically, the use of prescription
drugs by the general public can be seen as widespread, long-term clinical trials to determine their true safety. We are all guinea pigs.

37 - Work Kills More People Than War

The United Nations' International Labor Organization has revealed some horrifying stats:

The ILO estimates that approximately two million workers lose their lives annually due to
occupational injuries and illnesses, with accidents causing at least 350,000 deaths a year.
For every fatal accident, there are an estimated 1,000 non-fatal injuries, many of which
result in lost earnings, permanent disability and poverty. The death toll at work, much of
which is attributable to unsafe working practices, is the equivalent of 5,000 workers dying
each day, three persons every minute.

This is more than double the figure for deaths from warfare (650,000 death* per year).
According to the ILO's SafeWork programme, work kills more people than alcohol and
drugs together and the resulting loss in Gross Domestic Product is 20 times greater than all
official development assistance to the developing countries.

Each year, 6,570 US workers die because of injuries at work, while 60,225 meet their maker due to occupational diseases. (Meanwhile, 13.2 million get hurt, and 1.1 million develop illnesses that don't kill them.) On an average day, two or three workers are fatally shot, two fall to their deaths, one is killed after being smashed by a vehicle, and one is electrocuted. Each year, around 30 workers die of heat stroke, and another 30 expire from carbon monoxide.

Although blue collar workers face a lot of the most obvious dangers, those slaving in offices or
stores must contend with toxic air, workplace violence, driving accidents, and (especially for the
health-care workers) transmissible diseases. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration warns that poisonous indoor air in nonindustrial workplaces causes "[t]housands of heart disease deaths [and] hundreds of lung cancer deaths" each year.

But hey, everybody has to go sometime, right? And since we spend so much of our lives in the
workplace, it's only logical that a lot of deaths happen — or at least are set into motion — on the
job. This explanation certainly is true to an extent, but it doesn't excuse all such deaths. The
International Labor Organization says that half of workplace fatalities are avoidable. In A Job to
Die For, Lisa Cullen writes:

In the workplace, few real accidents occur because the surroundings and operations are
known; therefore, hazards can be identified. When harm from those hazards can be
foreseen, accidents can be prevented....

Most jobs have expected, known hazards. Working in and near excavations, for example,
poses the obvious risks of death or injury from cave-in.... When trenches or excavations
collapse because soil was piled right up to the edge, there is little room to claim it was an
accident.

38 - The Suicide Rate Is Highest Among The Elderly

If you judge by the media and the public education programs, you might be inclined to think that teenagers and young adults (aged 15 to 24) are the age group most likely to kill themselves.
Actually, they have the second-lowest rate of suicide. (The absolute lowest rate is among kids
aged 5 to 14; children younger than that are apparently deemed incapable of consciously
choosing to end their lives.) It is the elderly, by far, who have the highest rate of suicide.

In the US, of every 100,000 people aged 75 to 79, 16.5 kill themselves. For those 80 and over,
the rate is 19.43. This compares to a rate of 8.15 per 100,000 for people between the ages 15 and 19, and 12.84 for people aged 20 to 24.

As with every age group, men are far more likely to kill themselves, but among the elderly this
trend reaches extreme proportions. Of people 65 and older, men comprise a staggering 84
percent of suicides.

Because men commit the vast majority of hara-kiri among old people, looking at these male
suicide rates makes for extremely depressing reading. For guys aged 75 to 79, the suicide rate is
34.26 per 100,000. In the 80 to 84 group, men's suicide rate is 44.12. When you look at men 85
and older, the suicide rate is a heart-breaking 54.52. Compare this to the suicide rate for dudes in their mid to late teens: 13.22 per 100,000.

It is true that suicide ranks as the second or third most common cause of death in young people
(depending on age group), while it is number 15 and under for various groups of the elderly.
Still, the suicide rate among the young is equal to their proportion of the population, while the
elderly are way overrepresented as a group. And old people are cut down by a great many
diseases and disorders virtually unknown to the young, which naturally pushes suicide down in
the rankings.

The reasons why this suicide epidemic is ignored are highly speculative and would be too
lengthy to get into here. However, we can rule out one seemingly likely explanation — suicide
among the aged is invisible because they usually O.D. on prescription drugs or kill themselves in other ways that could easily be mistaken for natural death in someone of advanced years. This doesn't wash, primarily because guns are the most common method of dispatch. Of suicides over 65, men used a gun 79.5 percent of the time, while women shot themselves 37 percent of the time. It's hard to mistake that for natural causes.

The sky-high suicide rate among the elderly applies to the entire world, not just the US. Plotted
in a graph, suicide rates by age group around the globe gently curve upward as age increases.
When the graph reaches the final age group, the line suddenly spikes, especially for men.
Worldwide, men 75 and over have a suicide rate of 55.7 per 100,000, while women in the same
age group have a rate of 18.8. This rate for old men is almost three times the global rate for guys
aged 15 to 24, while the rate for old women is well over three times the rate for young gals in
that age group.

39 - A Positive Result From An HIV Test Is Wrong Half The Time For Low-Risk People

Although a lot of progress has been made in improving the length and quality of life for people
with AIDS, getting a positive result from an HIV test must still rank as one of the worst pieces of
news a person can get. It's not uncommon for people to kill themselves right after hearing the
results, and those who don't commit suicide surely go through all kinds of mental anguish. But
the accuracy of these tests is lower than generally believed. In fact, if you test positive but you're
not a member of a high-risk group (such as non-monogamous gay men and intravenous drug
users), the odds are 50-50 that you actually have the virus.

To be declared HIV-positive, your blood goes through three tests — two ELISA tests and one
more sensitive and costly Western Blot test. Makers of the tests trumpet a 99.99 percent accuracy rate when all three are used. Many AIDS counselors even tell people that the tests never give a false positive (that is, the tests don't indicate that someone is HIV-positive when he or she really isn't). The test manufacturers' claim is misleading, and the counselors' claim is flat-out BS. Cognitive scientist Gerd Gigerenzer — who specializes in risk and uncertainty — explains the reality in plain English:

Imagine 10,000 men who are not in any known risk category. One is infected (base rate)
and will test positive with practical certainty (sensitivity). Of the 9,999 men who are not
infected, another one will also test positive (false positive rate). So we can expect that two
men will test positive.

Out of these two men, only one actually carries the virus. So, if you're a low-risk man who tests
positive, the chances are even — the same as a coin flip — that the result is right. It's highly
advisable that you take the tests again (and again). The results are even less reliable for women
in low-risk groups, since they have a still lower rate of HIV.

Of course, this doesn't apply to an HIV-negative result. If you test negative, the odds are
overwhelmingly good (9,998 out of 9,999) that this is correct. It also doesn't hold for people in
high-risk categories. For example, if we accept the estimate that 1.5 percent of gay men are HIVpositive, this means that out of every 10,000, an average of 150 are infected. An HIV test will almost surely pick up on all 150, and out of the remaining 9,850 uninfected men, one will
incorrectly be labeled positive. This means that only one out of 151 gay men will be falsely
diagnosed as having HIV A false positive is thus still possible but much more unlikely.

40 - DNA Matching Is Not Infallible

Speaking of tests that aren't all they're cracked up to be, let's look at DNA testing. This is
supposed to be the absolute silver bullet of criminal justice, an incontrovertible way to pin guilt
on someone. After all, the chances of a mismatch are one in a billion, a quadrillion, a jillion!
Some experts have testified under oath that a false match is literally impossible.

Not quite. As he did with HIV testing, risk scholar Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute
punches a hole in the matching of genetic material:

In the first blind test reported in the literature, three major commercial laboratories were
each sent 50 DNA samples. Two of the three declared one false match; in a second test one
year later, one of the same three laboratories declared a false match. From external tests
conducted by the California Association of I Crime Laboratory Directors, the
Collaborative Testing Services, and other agencies, the psychologist Jonathan Koehler and
his colleagues estimated the false positive rate of DNA fingerprinting to be on the order of 1
in 100. Cellmark Diagnostics, one of the laboratories that found matches between O.J.
Simpson's DNA and DNA extracted from a recovered blood stain at the murder scene,
reported its own false positive rate to the Simpson defense as roughly 1 in 200.

It gets even worse. In 1999, the College of American Pathologists performed its own secret tests
of 135 labs. Each lab was sent a DNA sample from the "victim," some semen from the "suspect,"
and a fake vaginal swab containing DNA from both parties. They were also sent a strand of the
"victim's" hair. The object was to see how many of the labs would make the matches (ie, match
the two sperm samples of the man, and match the hair and DNA sample of the woman). But
something unexpected happened: Three of the labs reported that the DNA from the suspect
matched the victim's DNA! Obviously, they had mixed up the samples. Only fourteen labs tested the hair, but out of those, one screwed it up by declaring a match to the "suspect."

These kind of switches don't happen only during artificial situations designed to gauge a lab's
accuracy (which are usually performed under ideal conditions). During a 1995 rape trial, a lab
reversed the labels on the DNA samples from the victim and the defendant. Their testing then
revealed a match between the defendant's alleged DNA (which was actually the victim's) and the DNA on the vaginal swab, which didn't contain any semen from the rapist. Luckily, this
boneheaded move was caught during the trial, but not everyone is so lucky.

The Journal of Forensic Science has reported an error that was discovered only after an innocent
man had been convicted of raping an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to prison, where lie was
undoubtedly brutalized in ways that would give you nightmares for the rest of your life, were
you to hear them described in detail. After four years, he was released because the lab hadn't
completely separated the real rapist's DNA (extracted from his semen) from the victim's DNA.
When the two were swirled together, they somehow matched that of the poor bastard whose
eleven alibi witnesses failed to sway the jury. But when the semen DNA was checked properly, it was beyond doubt that a match didn't exist.

While most false matches are the result of human error, other factors do come into play. Some
testing techniques are more definitive than others. In the case of one innocent man — Josiah
Sutton, found guilty of rape based primarily on DNA evidence — criminology professor William
C. Thompson said: "If police picked any two black men off the street, the chances that one of
them would have a DNA profile that 'matched' the semen sample as well as Sutton's profile is
better than one in eight." Also, we mustn't forget about corruption. In some known cases, DNA
analysts have misrepresented (ie, lied about) their findings in order to obtain convictions.

41 - An FBI Expert Testified That Lie Detectors Are Worthless For Security Screening

Now let's turn our attention to the last member of our trifecta of defective tests — the polygraph, more commonly referred to as the lie detector. Invented by the same person who created Wonder Woman and her golden lasso that makes you tell the truth (I'm not kidding), the polygraph is said to detect deception based on subtle bodily signals, such as pulse rate and sweatiness. Its proponents like to claim that it has a success rate of 90 percent or more. This is pure hogwash. While the evidence against lie detectors is way too voluminous to get into here, it will be very instructive to look at a statement from Dr. Drew Richardson. Richardson is a scientist who was an FBI agent for 25 years; in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he dealt with polygraphs.

In fall 1997, a Senate Judiciary subcommittee held hearings regarding the FBI Crime Lab.
Richardson gave scorching testimony about polygraphs. Referring specifically to the practice of
using lie detectors to question people in sensitive positions, he said under oath:

It is completely without any theoretical foundation and has absolutely no validity. Although
there is disagreement amongst scientists about the use of polygraph testing in criminal
matters, there is almost universal agreement that polygraph screening is completely invalid
and should be stopped. As one of my colleagues frequently says, the diagnostic value of this
type of testing is no more than that of astrology or tea-leaf reading.

If this test had any validity (which it does not), both my own experience, and published
scientific research has proven, that anyone can be taught to beat this type of polygraph
exam in a few minutes.

Because of the nature of this type of examination, it would normally be expected to produce
large numbers of false positive results (falsely accusing an examinee of lying about some
issue). As a result of the great consequences of doing this with large numbers of law
enforcement and intelligence community officers, the test has now been manipulated to
reduce false positive results, but consequently has no power to detect deception in
espionage and other national security matters. Thus, I believe that there is virtually no
probability of catching a spy with the use of polygraph screening techniques. I think a
careful exam-ination of the Aldrich Ames case will reveal that any shortcomings in the use
of the polygraph were not simply errors on the part of the polygraph examiners involved,
and would not have been eliminated if FBI instead of CIA polygraphers had conducted
these examinations. Instead I believe this is largely a reflection of the complete lack of
validity of this methodology. To the extent that we place any confidence in the results of
polygraph screening, and as a consequence shortchange traditional security vetting
techniques, I think our national security is severely jeopardized.

After he ripped polygraphs a new one, the FBI silenced Richardson, refusing to let him speak
publicly about the subject again.

42 - The Bayer Company Made Heroin

Aspirin isn't the only "wonder drug that works wonders" that Bayer made. The German
pharmaceutical giant also introduced heroin to the world.

The company was looking for a cough suppressant that didn't have problematic side effects, mainly addiction, like morphine and codeine. And if it could relieve pain better than morphine,
that was a welcome bonus.

When one of Bayer's chemists approached the head of the pharmacological lab with ASA — to be sold under the name "aspirin" — he was waved away. The boss was more interested in something else the chemists had cooked up — diacetylmorphine. (This narcotic had been created in 1874 by a British chemist, who had never done anything with it.)

Using the tradename "Heroin" — because early testers said it made them feel heroisch (heroic) — Bayer sold this popular drug by the truckload starting in 1898. Free samples were sent
to thousands of doctors; studies appeared in medical journals. The Sunday Times of London noted: "By 1899, Bayer was producing about a ton of heroin a year, and exporting the drug
to 23 countries," including the US. Medicines containing smack were available over-the-counter at drug stores, just as aspirin is today. The American Medical Association gave heroin its stamp of approval in 1907.

But reports of addiction, which had already started appearing in 1899, turned into a torrent after several years. Bayer had wisely released aspirin the year after heroin, and this new non-addictive painkiller and anti-inflammatory was well on its way to becoming the most popular drug ever. In 1913, Bayer got out of the heroin business.

Not that the company has kept its nose clean since then:

A division of the pharmaceutical company Bayer sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting
medicine for hemophiliacs — medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS — to
Asia and Latin America in the mid-1980s while selling a new, safer product in the West,
according to documents obtained by The New York Times.... [I]n Hong Kong and Taiwan
alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs got HIV after using Cutter's old medicine, according to
records and interviews. Many have since died.

43 - LSD Has Been Used Successfully In Psychiatric Therapy

Given the demonization of the psychedelic drug LSD, it may seem inconceivable that
mainstream , psychiatrists were giving it to patients during sessions. Yet for at least 20 years,
that's exactly what happened.

Created in 1938, LSD was first suggested as a tool in psychotherapy in 1949. The following year
saw the first studies in medical/psychiatric journals. By 1970, hundreds of articles on the uses of LSD in therapy had appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of Psychology, the Archives of General Psychiatry, the Quarterly Journal of Studies of Alcoholism, many non-English-language journals, and elsewhere.

Psychiatric and psychotherapeutic conferences had segments devoted to LSD, and two
professional organizations were formed for this specialty, one in Europe and the other in North
America. International symposia were held in Princeton, London, Amsterdam, and other
locations. From 1950 to 1965, LSD was given in conjunction with therapy to an estimated
40,000 people worldwide.

In his definitive book on the subject, LSD Psychotherapy, transpersonal psychotherapist
Stanislav Grof, MD, explains what makes LSD such a good aid to headshrinking:

...LSD and other psychedelics function more or less as nonspecific catalysts and amplifiers
of the psyche.... In the dosages used in human experimentation, the classical psychedelics,
such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, do not have any specific pharmacological effects.
They increase the energetic niveau in the psyche and the body which leads to manifestation
of otherwise latent psychological processes.

The content and nature of the experiences that these substances induce are thus not
artificial products of their pharmacological interaction with the brain ("toxic psychoses"),
but authentic expressions of the psyche revealing its functioning on levels not ordinarily
available for observation and study. A person who has taken LSD does not have an "LSD
experience," but takes a journey into deep recesses of his or her own psyche.

When used as a tool during full-scale therapy, Grof says, "the potential of LSD seems to be
extraordinary and unique. The ability of LSD to deepen, intensify and accelerate the
psychotherapeutic process is incomparably greater than that of any other drug used as an adjunct to psychotherapy, with the exception perhaps of some other members of the psychedelic group."

Due to bad trips experienced by casual users, not to mention anti-drug hysteria in general, LSD
was outlawed in the US in 1970. The Drug Enforcement Agency declares: "Scientific study of
LSD ceased circa 1980 as research funding declined."

What the DEA fails to mention is that medical and psychiatric research is currently happening,
albeit quietly. Few researchers have the resources and patience to jump through the umpteen
hoops required to test psychedelics on people, but a few experiments using LSD, ecstasy, DMT,
ketamine, peyote, and other such substances are happening in North America and Europe.
Universities engaged in this research include Harvard, Duke, Johns Hopkins, University College London, and the University of Zurich.

44 - Carl Sagan Was An Avid Pot-Smoker

When you're talking about scientists who achieved rock-star status in the second half of the twentieth century, the late astronomer and biologist Carl Sagan is right up there with Stephen Hawking. His Cosmos (1980) is one of the most popular science books ever written, planting itself on the New York Times bestseller list for 70 weeks and staying perpetually in print ever since. It was a companion for the PBS television series of the same name, which — along with numerous Tonight Show appearances — introduced Sagan and his emphatically stated phrase "billions and billions" into pop culture. His sole novel, Contact, was turned into a love-it-or-hate-it movie starring Jodie Foster as an erstwhile scientist searching for extraterrestrial life, with Matthew McConaughey as a New Age flake who, inevitably, makes his own form of contact with her.

Besides his pop-culture credentials, Sagan was pals with numerous legendary Nobel
Prize-winners while still in college, picked up a Pulitzer Prize for his book Dragons of Eden, and
consulted for NASA, MIT, Cornell, and RAND. He designed the human race's postcards to any
aliens that might be out there — the plaque onboard the Pioneer space probes and the record on the Voyager probes.

So it might come as a bit of a surprise that Sagan was an avid smoker of marijuana. Some might
even call him a pothead.

In his definitive biography of the celebrity scientist, Keay Davidson reveals that Sagan started
toking regularly in the early 1960s and that Dragons of Eden — which won the Pulitzer — "was
obviously written under the inspiration of marijuana." Davidson says of Sagan:

He believed the drug enhanced his creativity and insights. His closest friend of three
decades, Harvard psychiatry professor Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a leading advocate of the
decriminalization of marijuana, recalls an incident in the 1980s when one of his California
admirers mailed him, unsolicited, some unusually high-quality pot. Grinspoon shared the
joints with Sagan and his wife, Anne Druyan. Afterward, Sagan said, "Lester, I know
you've only got one left, but could I have it? I've got serious work to do tomorrow and I
could really use it."

Perhaps letting Sagan bogart the pot was Grinspoon's way of returning a favor, since Sagan had
contributed an essay to Marihuana Reconsidered, Grinspoon's classic 1971 book on the benefits
and low risks of reefer. For almost three decades, the author of this ode to Mary Jane was
anonymous, but in 1999 Grinspoon revealed that "Mr. X" was Sagan.

In the essay, Sagan wrote that weed increased his appreciation of art, music, food, sex, and
childhood memories, and gave him insights into scientific and social matters:

I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an
idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of Gaussian distribution curves. It
was a point obvious [sic] in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew curves in soap on the
shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of
about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide
range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics.... I have used them in
university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.

The staunchly atheistic/humanistic Sagan comes perilously close to mysticism in some passages:

I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect
to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with
my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception
of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of
myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a
playful and whimsical awareness....

I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with
cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and
our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs. Such a remark applies not
only to self-awareness and to intellectual pursuits, but also to perceptions of real people, a
vastly enhanced sensitivity to facial expression, intonations, and choice of words which
sometimes yields a rapport so close it's as if two people are reading each other's minds.

45 - One Of The Heroes Of Black Hawk Down Is A Convicted Child Molester

The movie Black Hawk Down was one of the biggest box office draws of 2001, and it earned its
director, Ridley Scott, an Oscar nomination. (He didn't win, but the movie got two Academy
Awards for editing and sound.) Based on Mark Bowden's nonfiction book of the same title, it
concerns the disastrous raid of Mogadishu, Somalia, by US elite soldiers in 1993.

One of these Special Forces soldiers underwent a name-change as he moved from the printed
page to the big screen. Ranger John "Stebby" Stebbins became Ranger Danny Grimes when
played by Scottish heartthrob Ewan McGregor. Why? Because in 2000, Stebbins was courtmartialed and sent to the stockade for rape and sodomy of a child under twelve.

This decidedly unheroic turn of events was confirmed by the Army, the Fort Leavenworth
military prison (Stebby's home for the next 30 years), and Black Hawk Down's author. Bowden
told the New York Post that the Army asked him to change Stebbins' name in the screenplay in
order to avoid embarrassing the military.

In an email to the newspaper, Stebby's ex-wife, Nora Stebbins, wrote: "They are going to make
millions off this film in which my ex-husband is portrayed as an All-American hero when the
truth is he is not."

46 - The Auto Industry Says That SUV Drivers Are Selfish And Insecure

People who tool around in hulking, big-ass sport utility vehicles have been getting dissed a lot
lately, but no one has raked them over the coals like the people who sold them the SUVs in the
first place. The multibillion-dollar auto industry does extensive research into its customers, and
lately that research has focused quite a bit on the people who buy SUVs.

Investigative reporter Keith Bradsher of the New York Times has looked into the SUV
phenomenon for years. He's read marketing reports meant only to be seen within the industry;
he's interviewed marketing executives from the car companies and from outside research firms.

The industry has come to some unflattering conclusions about the people who buy its SUVs. As
summarized by Bradsher:

They tend to be people who are insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their
marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their
driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little
interest in their neighbors and communities....

They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend
to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have
limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others.

David Bostwick, the director of market research at Chrysler, told Bradsher: "We have a basic
resistance in our society to admitting that we are parents, and no longer able to go out and find
another mate. If you have a sport utility, you can have the smoked windows, put the children in
the back and pretend you're still single."

Bostwick says that compared to those who buy similarly large minivans, SUV drivers are selfish:

Sport utility people say, "I already have two kids, I don't need 20." Then we talk to the people
who have minivans and they say, "I don't have two kids, I have 20 — all the kids in the
neighborhood."

One of General Motors' top engineers also spoke of the difference between minivanners and
SUVers: "SUV owners want to be more like, 'I'm in control of the people around me.'" He went
on:

With the sport utility buyers, it's more of an image thing. Sport utility buyers tend to be
more like, "I wonder how people view me," and are more willing to trade off flexibility or
functionality to get that.

The executive VP for North American auto operations at Honda revealed: "The people who buy
SUVs are in many cases buying the outside first and then the inside. They are buying the image
of the SUV first, and then the functionality."

Jim Bulin, a former Ford strategist who started his own marketing firm, told Bradsher: "It's about not letting anything get in your way and, in the extreme, about intimidating others to get out of your way." Daniel A. Gorell, who also used to market for Ford and now has his own firm, says simply that SUV drivers are "less giving, less oriented toward others."

Defenders of SUVs have attacked Bradsher for reporting these things, but they always forget the crucial point: Bradsher isn't the one slamming SUV owners — it's the auto industry itself.

47 - The Word "Squaw" Is Not a DerisiveTerm For The Vagina

It's widely believed that "squaw" is a crude word for the vagina. Whether people under this
misapprehension believe that the word is Native American (specifically from the Mohawk
language) or was made up by Europeans, they think that calling a woman "squaw" is the same as
calling her "cunt." Activists are on a crusade to stamp out the word, which is part of over 1,000
placenames in the United States, and they've met with some success. A 1995 Minnesota law, for
example, ordered the changing of all geographical names containing the misunderstood word.

William Bright— UCLA professor emeritus of linguistics and anthropology, and editor of the
book Native American Placenames of the United States — writes:

All linguists who have commented on the word "squaw," including specialists on Indian
languages and on the history of American vocabulary, agree that it is not from Mohawk, or
any other Iroquoian language. Rather, the word was borrowed as early as 1624 from
Massachusett, the language of Aigonquians in the area we now call Massachusetts; in that
language it meant simply "young woman."

Several languages of the Algonquian family — including Cree, Objibwa, and Fox — still use
similar words for "woman."

The confusion might have come from the fact that the Mohawk word for a woman's naughty bits is "otsiskwa." But since Mohawk belongs to a different language family (Iroquois), the
etym-ologies of the words are completely separate. Bright notes that current speakers of Mohawk don't consider "squaw" in any way related to their word for vagina.

Still, there is no doubt that "squaw" has been used as an epithet by white people, starting at least in the 1800s. It even appears this way in the work of James Fenimore Cooper. However, given its meaning of "woman," when used in a mean-spirited way, it's probably more equivalent to "broad" or "bitch" than to "cunt." Even this is a corruption of the word's true definition.

The many places across the US with names incorporating "squaw" were labeled that way to
honor female chiefs or other outstanding Native women, or because women performed
traditional activities at these locations. In an essay that earned her death threats, Abenaki
storyteller and historical consultant Marge Bruchac wrote:

Any word can hurt when used as a weapon. Banning the word will not erase the past, and
will only give the oppressors power to define our language. What words will be next?
Pappoose? Sachem? Pow Wow? If we accept the slander, and internalize the insult, we
discredit our female ancestors who felt no shame at hearing the word spoken. To ban
indigenous words discriminates against Native people and their languages. Are we to be
condemned to speaking only the "King's English?" What about all the words from other
Native American languages?....

When I hear it ["squaw"] spoken by Native peoples, in its proper context, I hear the voices
of the ancestors. I am reminded of powerful grandmothers who nurtured our people and
fed the strangers, of proud women chiefs who stood up against them, and of mothers and
daughters and sisters who still stand here today.

48 - You Can Mail Letters For Little Or No Cost

I may never receive another piece of mail, but I have to let you in on a secret: It's possible to
send letters for free or for well below current postage rates. Information on beating the postal
system has been floating around for decades, but it wasn't gathered in one place until outlaw
publisher Loompanics put forth How To Screw the Post Office by "Mr. Unzip" in 2000.

Not content to theorize from an ivory tower, Unzip put these methodsthrough the ultimate real-world test: He mailed letters. He also examined the envelopes in which hundreds upon hundreds of customers had paid their utility bills. Based on this, he offers proof that letters with insufficient postage often make it to their destinations.

The key is that the machines which scan for stamps work incredibly fast, processing ten letters per second. They're also fairly unsophisticated in their detection methods, relying mainly on stamps' glossy coating as a signal. Because of this, it's possible to successfully
use lower-rate stamps, including outdated stamps, postcard stamps, and even 1-cent stamps. Beyond that, Unzip successfully sent letters affixed with only the perforated edges from a block of stamps. Even those pseudostamps sent by charities like Easter Seals or environ-mental groups can fool the scanners.

Another approach is to cut stamps in half, using each portion as full postage. Not only does this
give you two stamps for the price of one, but you can often salvage the uncancelled portion of
stamps on letters you receive. In fact, the author shows that sometimes the Post Office processes stamps that have already been fully cancelled. This happens more often when the ink is light, but even dark cancellation marks aren't necessarily a deal-breaker.

Then there's the biggie, the Post Office's atomic secret that lets you mail letters for free. Say
you're sending a letter to dear old mom. Simply put mom's address as the return address. Then
write your address in the center of the envelope, where you'd normally put hers. Forget about the stamp. The letter will be "returned" to her for insufficient postage.

Unzip covers further techniques involving stamp positioning, metered mail, 2-cent stamps, and
other tricks. Except perhaps for the reversed address scam, none of these tricks will guarantee
your missive gets to its destination, so you wouldn't want to try them with important letters. But if you want to save a few cents once in a while — or more likely, you want to have fun hacking the postal system — it can be done.

49 - Advertisers Influence On The News Media Is Widespread

In 1995, the San Jose Mercury News almost went under because of a boycott by all of its car
company advertisers. Why were they so irate? The Merc had published an article telling
consumers how to negotiate a better price with car dealers.

When the executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, Larry Green, was challenged for
displaying editorial favoritism toward advertisers, he openly declared: "We have to take care of
our customers."

Tales like this bubble up every once in a while, so it shouldn't come as a shock that advertisers
sometimes try to influence the news outlets that run their ads. The real shock is how often this
happens.

In its 2002 survey, the Project for Excellence in Journalism asked 103 local TV newsrooms
across the US about pressure from sponsors:

In all, 17 percent of news directors say that sponsors have discouraged them from pursuing
stories (compared to 18 percent last year), and 54 percent have been pressured to cover
stories about sponsors, up slightly from 47 percent last year.

Of the stations that investigated auto companies that were sponsors, half suffered economically
for it, usually by the withdrawal of advertising. One car company cancelled $1 million of ads it
had planned with a station.

In a classic 1992 survey (that desperately needs to be repeated), Marquette University's
Department of Journalism tallied questionnaire results from 147 editors of daily newspapers.
Among the findings:

■ 93.2 percent said sponsors had "threatened to withdraw advertising from [the] paper because
of the content of the stories." (89 percent replied that the advertisers followed through on this
threat.)

■ 89.9 percent responded that advertisers had "tried to influence the content of a news story or
feature."

■ 36.7 percent said that advertisers had "succeeded in influencing news or features in [the]
newspaper."

■ 71.4 percent said that "an advertiser tried to kill a story at [the] newspaper."

■ 55.1 percent revealed that they had gotten "pressure from within [the] paper to write or tailor
news stories to please advertisers."

In the decade since this poll, the media have become even more corporate and more
consolidated, so it's hard to imagine that the situation has improved.

50 - The World's Museums Contain Innumerable Fakes

The next time you're marveling at a painting by Picasso, a statue by Michelangelo, or a carving
from ancient Egypt, don't be absolutely sure that you're looking at the genuine article. Art fakery has been around since ancient times and is still in full swing — museums, galleries, and private collections around the world are stocked with phonies. This fact comes to us from an insider's insider — Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In his book False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes, he writes:
The fact is that there are so many phonies and doctored pieces around these days that at
times, I almost believe that there are as many bogus works as genuine ones. In the decade
and a half that I was with the Metropolitan Museum of Art I must have examined fifty
thousand works in all fields. Fully 40 percent were either phonies or so hypocritically
restored or so misattributed that they were just the same as forgeries. Since then I'm sure
that that percentage has risen. What few art professionals seem to want to admit is that the
art world we are living in today is a new, highly active, unprincipled one of art fakery.

Ancient Egyptian objects are particularly likely to be bogus. Furthermore, Hoving estimates that the fraud rate for religious artifacts from pagan and early Christian times is literally 99 percent. As many as 5,000 fake Dürers were created after the master's death, and half of Vienna master Egon Schiele's pencil drawings are fakes.

But it isn't just current con artists making this junk; the ancients did it, too. For around a
millennia, Romans couldn't get enough of Greek statues, gems, glasses, and other objects, so
forgers stepped in to fill the demand. Hoving writes:

The volume was so great that Seneca the Elder (ca. 55 BC - AD 39) is recorded by a contemporaneous historian as remarking that there were no fewer than half a dozen
workshops in the first century AD working full time in Rome on just colored gems and intaglios. Today it's almost impossible to tell what's genuinely ancient Greek
and what's Roman fakery, because those gems and intaglios are made of material that dates to ancient times and the style is near perfect.

Art forgery isn't the realm of nobodies, either. During certain periods of their lives, Renaissance masters Donatello and Verochio put bread on the table by creating faux antiquities. Rubens painted copies of earlier artists. El Greco's assistants created five or six copies of their boss'
work, each of which was then passed off as the original (and they're still wrongly considered the originals).

Hoving reveals that pretty much every museum has at one time or another been suckered into
buying and displaying fakes, and many are still showing them. Of course, most of the examples
he uses are from the Met, but he also says that phony works still sit in the Louvre, the Getty, the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Vatican, among others. (Hoving estimates that 90 percent of the ancient Roman statues in the Holy See's collection are actually eighteenth-century European knock-offs.)

Revealing further examples, the Independent of London catalogs three Goyas in the Met that are now attributed to other artists; Rodin sketches actually done by his mistress; Fragonard's popular Le baiser à la dérobée (The Stolen Kiss), which seems to have been painted by his sister-in-law; and many Rubens works actually created by the artist's students. According to the newspaper: "The Rembrandt Research Committee claims that most works attributed to Rembrandt were in fact collaborative studio pieces."

It's enough to make you question the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Copyright Info

Copyright © 2003 Russ Kick

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References

Ten Commandments:
Book of Exodus, King James Bible.

Pope's Erotic Book:
Piccolomini, Aeneas Silvius (Pius II). The Goodli History of the Ladye
Lucres of Scene and of Her Lover Eurialus. Edited by E.J. Morrall. Oxford University Press,
1996. • Website of James O'Donnell, former professor of classical studies at the University of
Pennsylvania [ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/ ]. • Translations from early English into modern English by Russ Kick.

CIA Crimes:
Kelly, John. "Crimes and Silence." Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose
the Myth of a Free Press. Edited by Kristina Borjesson. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002,
pp 311-31. • Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, US House of Representatives, 104th
Congress. "IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century." Government Printing
Office, 1996, chapter 9: "Clandestine Service."

CIA Agent:
Gup, Ted. The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified Deaths at the CIA.
Doubleday (Random House), 2000. • Further reading: Laird, Thomas. Into Tibet: The CIA's First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa. Grove Press, 2002.

Afghanistan's Food Supply:
Woodward, Bob, and Dan Balz. "Combating Terrorism: 'It Starts Today'" ("10 Days in September," part 6). Washington Post, 1 Feb 2002. • This revelation was first unburied by Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive.

Terrorism Convictions:
Fazlollah, Mark. "Reports of Terror Crimes Inflated." Philadelphia
Inquirer, 15 May 2003. • Fazlollah, Mark, and Peter Nicholas. "US Overstates Arrests in
Terrorism." Philadelphia Inquirer, 16 Dec 2001. • United States General Accounting Office.
"Justice Department: Better Management Oversight and Internal Controls Needed to Ensure
Accuracy of Terrorism-Related Statistics." Jan 2003.

Provoking Terrorist Attack:
Arkin, William M. "The Secret War." Los Angeles Times, 27 Oct2002. • Defense Science Board. "DBS Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces inSupport of Counter Terrorism, Final Outbrief," 16 Aug 2002 (declassified version). • Floyd,
Chris. "Global Eye -- Into the Dark." Moscow Times, 1 Nov 2002. • Hess, Pamela. "Panel Wants$7bn Elite Counter-terror Unit." United Press International, 26 Sept 2002.

Nuking the Moo:
Barnett, Antony. "US Planned One Big Nuclear Blast for Mankind." Observer (London), 14 May 2000. • Davidson, Keay. Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: John Wiley& Sons, 1999. • Ulivi, Paolo. "Nuke the Moon!" Grand Tour Planetary Exploration Page [utenti.lycos.it/paoloulivi/], 13 Oct 2002. Ulivi is an engineer and the author of an upcoming book on unmanned lunar exploration from Springer-Praxis Publishing Ltd. • Zabarenko, Deborah. "Moon Bomb?" Reuters News Agency, 17 May 2000. • Zheleznyakov, Aleksandr. "The E-4 Project: Exploding a Nuclear Bomb on the Moon." Enciklopediya Kosmonavtika [Cosmonautics Encyclopedia]. Translated by Sven Grahn of the Swedish Space Corporation [www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/E3/E3orig.htm].

Nuking North Carolina:
The Goldsboro incident remained shrouded in mystery and misinformation until four students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill did loads of original research (interviews, FOIA requests, etc.) and created a Website called Broken Arrow: Goldsboro, NC . It is by far the definitive source of information on this almost-catastrophe. The students are Cliff Nelson, Nick Harrison, Andrew Leung, and Megan E. Butler

World War III:
Kozlov, Yuriy, and Aleksandr Stepanenko. "Norwegian Rocket Incident Settled." ITAR-TASS (Moscow), 27 Jan 1995. • Krieger, David. "Crisis and Opportunity." Website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation [www.wagingpeace.org], 2002. • The Back From the Brink Campaign. Short Fuse to Catastrophe: The Case for Taking Nuclear Weapons Off Hair-trigger Alert (briefing book). Self-published, 2001, p 4. [www.backfromthebrink.org].

Korean War Never Ended:
Hermes, Walter. "Armistice Negotiations." The Korean War: An Encyclopedia. Ed. by Stanley Sandier. Garland Publishing, 1995. • Levie, Howard S. "Armistice." Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know. Ed. by Roy Gutman and David Rieff. W.W. Norton & Co., 1999. • Text of the Korean War Armistice Agreement, 27 July 1953. • Unsigned. "The Korean War Armistice." BBC News, 18 Feb 2003.

Agent Orange in Korea:
"Agent Orange and Related Issues." Department of Veterans Affairs Fact Sheet, Jan 2003. • "Agent Orange Outside of Viet Nam." News and Notes for Florida Veterans, Apr 2003. Department of Veterans Affairs, St. Petersburg Regional Office. • Jelinek, Pauline. "Some to Get Agent Orange Testing." Associated Press, 3 Nov 2000. • VHA Directive 2000-027: Registry Examinations for Veterans Possibly Exposed to Agent Orange in Korea. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, 5 Sept 2000.

Student Massacres:
Cabell, Brian, and Matt Smith. "S.C. College Marks 'Orangeburg Massacre' Anniversary" CNN, 8 Feb 2001. • Sellers, Cleveland. "The Orangeburg Massacre, 1968." It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America. Ed. by Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz. University of California Press, 1989. • Spofford, Tim. Lynch Street: The May 1970 Slayings at Jackson State College. Kent State University Press, 1988. • "The May 1970 Tragedy at Jackson State University." Jackson State University Website. [http://www.jsums.edu ~www/ggO2.htm]. • Further reading: Nelson, Jack, and Jack Bass. The Orangeburg Massacre (second edition). Mercer University Press, 1999.

Churchill:
Churchill, Winston. "Zionism Versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People." Illustrated Sunday Herald (London), 8 Feb 1920. An image of the original article as it was printed has been widely reproduced on the Web. • "Sir Winston Churchill." Biography on the BBC Website. • Woods, Frederick. A Bibliography of the Works of Sir Winston Churchill, KG, OM, CH, MP. University of Toronto Press, 1963: p 186.

Auschwitz Tattoo:
Black, Edwin. "The IBM Link to Auschwitz." Village Voice, 9 Oct 2002.

Hitler's Relatives:
Gardner, David. The Last of the Hitlers. BMM, 2001. Gardner doesn't reveal the Hitlers' new last name nor the town in which they live.

Male Witches:
Apps, Lara, and Andrew Gow. Male Witches in Early Modern Europe. Manchester University Press, 2003.

Cannibal Colonists:
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States (Perennial Classics Edition). HarperCollins Publishers, 2001, p 24. (Originally published 1980.)

Feminists Against Abortion:
Taken directly from the writings of Anthony, Stanton, Blackwell, and Woodhull and Claflin, reproduced in MacNair, Rachel, Mare Krane Derr, and Linda Naranjo-Huebl (eds.). Prolife Feminism: Yesterday and Today. Sulzburger & Graham Publishing, 1995.

Black Confederates:
Barrow, Charles Kelly, J.H. Segars, and R.B. Rosenburg. Black Confederates. Pelican Publishing Company, 2001. • Segars, J.H., and Charles Kelly Barrow. Black Southerners In Confederate Armies: A Collection of Historical Accounts. Southern Lion Books, 2001.

Electric Cars:
Didik, Frank. "History and Directory of Electric Cars from 1834-1987." Didik Design Website [www.didik.com], 2001. • Rae, John B. "The Electric Vehicle Company: A Monopoly that Missed." Business History Review, 1955. • Schallenberg, Richard H. "Prospects for the Electric Vehicle: A Historical Perspective." IEEE Transactions on Education, vol. E-23, No 3, Aug 1980. • Schiffer, Michael Brian, with Tamara C. Butts and Kimberly K. Grimm. Taking Charge: The Electric Automobile in America. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994. • Wakefield, Ernest Henry, PhD. History of the Electric Automobile: Hybrid Electric Vehicles. Society of Automotive Engineers, 1998.

Juries:
Conrad, Clay S. Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine. Carolina Academic Press, 1998. • Various literature from I the Fully Informed Jury Association, [www.fija.org], 1- 800-TEL-JURY, PO Box 5570, Helena MT 59604.

Police Nonprotection:
Stevens, Richard W. Dial 911 and Die: The Shocking Truth About the
Police Protection Myth. Mazel Freedom Press, 1999.

Government Can Take Your Home:
Berliner, Dana. Government Theft: Top 10 Abuses of Eminent Domain, 1998-2002. Castle Coalition (a project of the Institute for Justice), 2003. • Berliner, Dana. Public Power, Private Gain: A Five-Year, State-by-State Report Examining the Abuse of Eminent Domain. Castle Coalition (a project of the Institute for Justice), Apr 2003.

Supreme Court on Drugs:
Gray, Judge James P. Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs. Temple University Press, 2001. • Linder v. United States, 925. No. 183. U.S. Supreme Court 268 U.S. 5 (1925). • Robinson v. California. SCT.1193, 370 U.S. 660, 82 S. Ct. 1417, 8 L. Ed. 2d 758 (1962). • Powell v. Texas, 392 U.S. 514 (1968) (USSC).

Age of Consent:
For the US, actual text of state laws. The Age of Consent Website [www.ageofconsent.com] contains all the relevant state codes, as well as links to the code onofficial state Websites. The site also has primarily official documentation (often from Interpol) regarding the laws in other countries.

Scientists' Citations:
Muir, Hazel. "Scientists Exposed as Sloppy Reporters." New Scientist, 14 Dec 2002.

Pasteur:
Waller, John. Einstein's Luck: The Truth Behind Some of the Greatest Scientific Discoveries. Oxford University Press, 2002: Chapter 1, "The Pasteurization of Spontaneous Generation," pp 14-31. (Published in the UK as Fabulous Science.)

GAIA Nuclear Power:
Lovelock, James. Preface to Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy by Bruno Comby. TNR Editions, 1995.

Genetically-Engineered Humans:
Barritt, Jason A., et al. "Mitochondria in Human Offspring Derived From Ooplasmic Trans-plantation." Human Reproduction, 16.3 (2001), pp 513-6. • Email communication from Dr. Joseph Cummins, 4 June 2003. • "First Cases of Human Germline Genetic Modification Announced." British Medical Journal 322 (12 May 2001), p 1144. • "Genetically Modified Human Babies?" Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 8 May 2001. • Hawes, S.M., C. Sapienza, and K.E. Latham. "Ooplasmic Donation in Humans: The Potential for Epigenic Modifications." Human Reproduction 17.4 (2002), 850-2. • Hill, Amelia. "Horror at 'Three Parent Foetus' Gene Disorders." Observer (London), 20 May 2001. • Turner Syndrome Society Website [www.turner-syndrome-us.org].

Insurance Industry:
Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003, pp 432-5.

Smoking:
The American Council on Science and Health. Cigarettes: What the Warning Label
Doesn't Tell You. Prometheus Books, 1997.

Bovine Leukemia:
Buehring, G.C., K.Y Choi, and H.M. Jensen. "Bovine Leukemia Virus in Human Breast Tissues." Breast Cancer Research 2001 3(Suppl 1):A14. • Buehring, Gertrude, PhD. "Bovine Leukemia Virus Infection and Human Breast Cancer Risk." Grant proposal and final report, 2002. • Kradjian, Robert M., MD. "The Milk Letter: A Message to My Patients." Website of American Fitness Professionals and Associates [www.afpafitness.com], no date. Kradjian is chief of breast surgery, Division of General Surgery, Seton Medical Centre, Daly City, CA. • USDA. "High Prevalence of BLV in US Dairy Herds." Info sheet from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, US Department of Agriculture, undated.

CAT Scans:
Wysong, Pippa. "Doctors Have Little More Info Than Patients About CT Scan Safety." Medical Post 39.20 (20 May 2003). • "Computed Tomography Imaging (CT Scan, CAT Scan)" on Imaginis.com.

Medication Errors:
Regush, Nicholas. "Medication Errors: Too Little Attention." RedFlagsDaily e-newsletter, 30 May 2003. • Ricks, Delthia. "Poison in Prescription: Illegible Writing Can Lead to Dangerous Medication Errors." Newsday (New York), 19 Mar 2001. •Waters, Rob. "Precarious Prescriptions: Can Your Doctor's Handwriting Kill You?" WebMD, 4 Aug 2000. • Website of the United States Pharmacopeial Convention, Inc. [www.usp.org].

Prescription Drugs:
Graham, Garthe K., Sidney M. Wolfe, et al. "Postmarketing Surveillance and Black Box Warnings." JAMA 288 (2002), pp 955-9. • Lazarou, Jason, M.Sc, Bruce H. Pomeranz, MD, PhD, and Paul N. Corey, PhD. "Incidence of Adverse Drug Reactions in Hospitalized Patients: A Meta-analysis of Prospective Studies." JAMA 279 (1998), pp 1200-5. • Website of the Food and Drug Administration [www.fda.gov], • Wolfe, Sidney, MD. "Statement by Sidney Wolfe: Recent Events Arguing Against Things Getting Better as Suggested by the FDA Editorial in Tomorrow's JAMA," Public Citizen Website [www.citizen.org], circa 1 May 2002.

Work Kills:
International Labor Organization. "Workers' Memorial Day Ceremony to Focus on Emergency Workers, Firefighters." Press release, 24 Apr 2002. • Cullen, Lisa. A Job to Die For:
Why So Many Americans Are Killed, Injured or Made III at Work and What to Do About It.
Common Courage Press, 2002. This book uses the following as its sources for the US statistics
I've cited: Bureau of Labor Statistics and Costs of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses by J. Paul
Leigh (University of Michigan Press, 2000).

Elder Suicide:
US statistics are for the latest available year (2000) and are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, particularly their Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System [www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/] and their factsheet "Suicide in the United States." • Global statistics are from the World Health Organisation's graph: "Distribution of suicide rates (per 100,000), by gender and age, 1998." Located on the WHO'S international site [www.who.int].

HIV Tests:
Gigerenzer, Gerd. Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You. Simon & Schuster, 2002.

DNA Matching:
Gigerenzer, Gerd. Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You. Simon & Schuster, 2002. • Thompson, W.C., E Taroni, and C.G. Aitken. "How the Probability of a False Positive Affects the Value of DNA Evidence." Journal of Forensic Sciences 48.1 (Jan 2003). • Website of L.D. Mueller, professor of biology at the University of California Irvine School of Biological Sciences [darwin.bio.uci.edu/~mueller/]. • Website of Scientific Testimony, an online journal devoted to forensic evidence, "edited and published by faculty and students of the Department of Criminology, Law & Society, University of California, Irvine" www.scientific.org].

Lie Detectors:
Opening Statement on Polygraph Screening, by Supervisory Special Agent Dr. Drew C. Richardson, FBI Laboratory Division, before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, Senate Hearing 105- 431: A Review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory: Beyond the Inspector General Report, 29 Sept 1997. Available at antipolygraph.org.

Bayer:
Askwith, Richard. "How Aspirin Turned Hero." Sunday Times (London), 13 Sept 1998. • Bogdanich, Walt, and Eric Koli. "2 Paths of Bayer Drug in 80's: Riskier Type Went Overseas."
New York Times, 22 May 2003. • Metzger, Th. The Birth of Heroin and the Demonization of the
Dope Fiend. Loompanics Unlimited, 1998.

LSD Therapy:
Grof, Stanislav, MD. LSD Psychotherapy: Exploring the Frontiers of the Hidden Mind. Hunter House, 1980, 1994. • "Psychedelic Research Around the World" page [www.maps.org/research/] on the Website of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies. • "LSD: The Drug," Website of the Drug Enforcement Administration [www.usdoj.gov/dea/].

Sagan:
Davidson, Keay. Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999. • Grinspoon,
Lester. Marihuana Reconsidered. Harvard University Press, 1971.

Black Hawk Down:
Turner, Megan. "War Film 'Hero' Is a Rapist." New York Post, 18 Dec 2001.

SUV Drivers:
Bradsher, Keith. High and Mighty: SUVs—The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way. PublicAffairs (Perseus), 2002, pp 101-7.

"Squaw":
Bright, William. "The Sociolinguistics of the 'S-Word': 'Squaw' in American Placenames." Undated article posted to Dr Bright's Website at the Northern California Indian Development Council [www.ncidc.org/bright/]. • Bruchac, Marge. "Reclaiming the Word 'Squaw' in the Name of the Ancestors." NativeWeb, Nov 1999.

Mailing Letters:
Mr. Unzip. How to Screw the Post Office. Loompanics Unlimited, 2000.

Advertisers' Influence:
Fleetwood, Blake. "The Broken Wall: How Newspapers Are Selling Their Credibility to Advertisers." Washington Monthly, Sept 1999. • Kerwin, Ann Marie. "Advertiser Pressure on Newspapers Is Common: Survey." Editor and Publisher, 16 Jan 1993. • The Project for Excellence in Journalism. "Local TV News Project - 2002: Investigative Journalism Despite the Odds." On their Website [www.journalism.org].

Art Forgery:
Hoving, Thomas. False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Tlme Art Fakes. Simon & Schuster, 1996. • Nash, Elizabeth. "Was There a Family Conspiracy to Cover up the Truth About Goya's Finest Work?" Independent (London), 1 May 2003.

Note: An index for this book is available at books.disinfo.com

About The Author

Russ Kick:
Is the editor of Abuse Your Illusions: The Disinformation Guide to Media Mirages and Establishment Lies; Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies; and You Are Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths. His upcoming book is The Disinformation Book of Lists. Earlier, he wrote Outposts: A Catalogue of Rare and Disturbing Alternative Information and Psychotropedia: Publications From the Periphery, as well as editing Hot Off the Net: Erotica and Other Sex Writings From the Internet. He has contributed to numerous books, Websites, and periodicals (including the Village Voice, which ran his column, "Net-O-Matic"). Russ publishes The Memory Hole [www.thememoryhole.org], devoted to rescuing knowledge and freeing information. His personal Website is Mind Pollen [www.mindpollen.com].